Rosabella’s winning ways
Mia Smith presents her Junior AllAmerican Aged Cow, Miss Ronde Rosabella-ET, Nov. 8 at the All-American Junior Jersey Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Smith’s cow went on to be named the senior and reserve grand champion and the overall premier performance cow of the show.
Wisconsin cow captures All-American banners
By Danielle Nauman danielle.n@dairystar.com
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — This year will go down as one that Mia Smith will never forget as the 12-year-old experienced show ring thrills that most never will.
Smith’s Jersey aged cow, Miss Ronde Rosabella-ET, hit the fall shows running, collecting a bevy of ribbons and banners, including big wins at the All-American Jersey Shows, held last month in Louisville, in conjunction with the North American International Livestock Exposition.
Smith lives with her parents, Matt and Kate, brother, Moxon, and sister, Letty, on the family’s farm near Elroy, Wisconsin, where they milk a small herd, raise show heifers, and are developing a edgling direct-to-consumer beef market.
Rosabella kicked off Smith’s inaugural foray onto the green shavings of Freedom Hall at the All-American Junior Jersey Show Nov. 8, by being named the Junior All-American Aged Cow before being tapped for the honors of senior and reserve grand champion.
“When she got pulled in rst, I was really excited,” Smith said.
See pages 24 and 25 of this section for details!
“All
Educating via social media
Megan DairyGirl brings the farm to the phone
By Dan Wacker dan.w@dairystar.com
NEW VIENNA, Iowa — In a day and age where the public is disconnected from food production, there are tools to bridge the gap and put dairy farms in the pocket of consumers. Megan McAllister, known on social media as Megan DairyGirl, is helping to educate the public about life on the farm by utilizing social media to reach people from all walks of life.
Across three platforms — TikTok, Facebook and Instagram — Megan DairyGirl proles have nearly 600,000 followers as McAllister seeks to educate the public on daily life on a dairy farm. Megan and her husband, Ted, in partnership with Ted’s brother, Rob, milk 280 cows at McAllister Family Dairy in a double-12 parallel parlor. The Holstein and Jersey herd has an average daily production of 100 pounds of milk, with tests of 4.5% butterfat and 3.3% protein.
stands in her calf barn
Dairy, hun ng go hand in hand
Hardie-Quall Family Farm celebrate traditions of togetherness
By Dan Wacker dan.w@dairystar.com
BLAIR, Wis. — In November, people all over Wisconsin make a wardrobe change. The neon jacket is easy to spot and invokes memories of deer hunting season in people from all walks of life.
At Hardie-Quall Family Farm near Blair, the traditions of hunting and farming have been passed across generations. Dairy farmers Andy Quall and Claudia Hardie-Quall are now hunting, farming and making chili with the next generation. The family has been milking 35 cows in a tiestall barn since 2018. The couple took over after HardieQuall’s parents retired from the farm, which has been in the family for near-
DAN WACKER/DAIRY STAR
Megan McAllister
Nov. 19 on her farm near New Vienna, Iowa. McAllister has garnered a following on social media with her Megan DairyGirl proles as she educates people on daily life on a dairy farm.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAIRY AGENDA TODAY
DAN WACKER/DAIRY STAR
Andy Quall sits with his sons, Jamesen (le ) and Cedric, in the woods Nov. 25 near Blair, Wisconsin. Quall and his family milks 35 cows. He has been hun ng since he was 4 and hopes to pass the tradi ons on to his children.
DAIRY ST R
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ly 100 years. In 2006, the farm was transitioned to organic, and in 2022 it was transitioned to grass-fed organic.
“We took over the farm because we knew we wanted the kids to grow up there,” Hardie-Quall said. “We both thought that raising our kids on the farm would provide a childhood where they could learn so much and we could work together. We enjoyed our experiences on the farm and wanted to pass that along to our boys.”
Along with farming, Quall has hunted since he was 4. He spent time with his dad and uncle in the woods and remembers the excitement that came with this time of year.
“I always looked forward to being out in the woods,” Quall said. “That’s something I wanted to pass on. I can tell now that it’s taken hold with my oldest with how eager he is when we get our orange out.”
The farm provides hunting ground for other members of Quall’s family as well. Their hunting was fruitful, as Quall’s 14-year-old niece took down a deer before making it to the stand.
“We were walking out to our spots and we saw a buck perk up,” Quall said. “My niece saw it and red and we
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Cedric Quall and Claudia Hardie-Quall work together to feed their herd Nov. 25 on their farm near Blair, Wisconsin. The Hardie family has owned the property for over 100 years.
IL
Con nued from MCALLISTER | Page 1
McAllister got her start in the dairy industry on her family’s farm, Kregel Farms, near Guttenberg. After earning a dairy science degree from Iowa State University, she entered the workforce at the Northeast Iowa Dairy & Agriculture Foundation where she worked for seven years. Like many in her age group, McAllister was on social media, and like nearly a billion others in 2020, she downloaded TikTok.
“I started poking around a little bit and found that there was an agriculture community on TikTok,” McAllister said. “There was a lot of farming content, some livestock content, but I didn’t see any dairy content.”
With established creators on other platforms, TikTok was a way to reach a different audience.
“There were established, original dairy farm content allstars on other apps, and they’re fabulous at what they do,” McAllister said. “I just wasn’t seeing them on this app. So, I decided to make a couple of videos and if they opped, or it’s a negative experience, I don’t need it. But the videos took off and people came back with good, genuine questions.”
McAllister saw an opportunity to educate and enlighten demographics such people who are 2-3 generations removed from farming, or people from all walks of life who have not set foot on a dairy farm.
“We can talk about everything from hormones to antibiotics, to calf care to milk quality, to treating sick animals, the
lister Family Dairy.
weather impacting cows, the list goes on,” McAllister said. “It’s all important, but I think it also helps people to connect to the farm. I don’t want to be a robot spewing out facts, but maybe when a follower sees something misleading or they aren’t sure about it, they feel like they can trust someone on our side of the industry.”
Building trust with her followership has created a symbiotic relationship. When pressed for content ideas, McAllister utilizes her followers to see
what they have questions about by looking through comments on posts.
“Every day is the same for us, but different,” McAllister said. “It’s establishing what we’re doing that day; are we tagging calves, are we dry treating cows, is the hoof trimmer here, there’s so many opportunities to capture content. We get so many good, genuine questions on our videos that it helps us continue to help educate.”
Negative comments also come with the territory.
“I enjoy taking a negative comment and making it a learning opportunity,” McAllister said. “It’s been awesome to see our followers sticking up for us on negative comments with facts they learned. I actually made a difference, so it’s pretty incredible to have done that just by using my phone.”
As her TikTok account was picking up steam, she nearly lost it all. Her account was reported to TikTok and was suspended. In order to bring her account back, she led an appeal.
“There was no guarantee I was going to get my account back after it was suspended,” McAllister said. “Everything that I had worked on for two years was potentially gone.”
It was then that she realized that if she was going to continue to advocate for the dairy industry, she needed to diversify the platforms she was on. This led to the expansion of the Megan DairyGirl brand as she created accounts on Facebook and Instagram to partner with her growing TikTok. The expanded brand allows her to reach more people from around the world. Currently, the Megan DairyGirl proles reach 3 million people every month.
“There’s never been a time in history where you could reach so many people so quickly,” McAllister said. “The world lives live now. It’s fascinating that you can post a video one night and wake up and see it take off.”
McAllister and other dairy content creators have helped consumers get as close to the farm as they can without setting foot outside their homes.
“There’s never too many dairy content creators,” McAllister said. “We can all produce a great product, but everyone can do it so differently and that’s so beautiful and awesome. So, if somebody’s passionate about sharing what they do, just do it because it could be totally different than the way somebody else does it, and different isn’t bad.”
DAN WACKER/DAIRY STAR
Megan McAllister feeds grain to ca le Nov. 19 on her farm near New Vienna, Iowa. McAllister, along with her husband, Ted, and brother-in-law, Rob, milk 280 Holsteins and Jerseys at McAl-
“I knew I had to make her look good so that she didn’t get moved down.”
Smith accomplished her mission, as judge Trent Kilgus sent the cow out to the top of the nal line-up, where she collected her Junior All-American accolades.
“What a beautiful cow leading out this class,” Kilgus said. “As a breeder this is the kind of cow we breed for. When she’s out on the move, you can’t pick her apart — a beautiful mammary system, so much width throughout, just a cow that doesn’t have a hole in her.”
show’s eventual champion.
“I was hoping I could get second in my class; I didn’t think I could beat Stony Point Joel Bailey,” Smith said. “I was nervous being out there, but when she got pulled in second, I was happy to be second to Bailey again.”
Smith said Rosabella had also placed second to Bailey at World Dairy Expo in October.
“Being second to the cow that was the supreme champion at Expo, not just once but twice — that’s pretty exciting,” Smith said.
The butteries in her stomach came out in full force as she took her cow back in the ring for the selection of senior champion, Smith said. When she received the handshake that named Rosabella the senior champion she said she did not know what to think.
“I was so happy, I was shocked,” Smith said. “The judge told me he really liked my cow.”
As the show progressed, Rosabella was chosen as the reserve grand champion, something way beyond her dreams, Smith said.
As the show wound down, the cow’s winning ways were not complete.
Rosabella was named the overall premier performance cow of the show, an award that is determined by the American Jersey Cattle Association using a formula that considers the animal’s actual performance combined with genetic potential and in-class ranking. Two qualifying cows from each class are selected, and those cows are ranked to determine the top cow.
To top off an incredible All-American weekend for Smith, Rosabella was again a powerhouse in the premier performance class, being named the reserve champion premier performance cow, taking home another $500 prize check.
The bond that Smith has with Rosabella is deep and has been forged over time.
“I’ve always shown Rosabella; she was my rst calf,” Smith said. “I received her as a gift, as an embryo — so I’ve owned her since before she was born.”
While the many banners Rosabella has collected this year will hang on her family’s walls for years to come, Smith already has next year in her sights.
“Rosabella is bred back to calve in June next year,” Smith said. “She has a March calf from this year that I’m excited to show, too.”
Smith has grown up with Rosabella, working with and showing the animal for over half her life.
“We didn’t know anything about that — what it was all about or that she was even eligible,” Smith said. “But she won it and got a big check for $500 and another banner. She got a turbo fan for being reserve grand, too.”
Rosabella teamed up with four other animals exhibited by youth from Wisconsin to claim a share of the winning state herd banner as well.
Rosabella spent the next two days relaxing in the pack, preparing for her next long walk to Freedom Hall, this time for the All-American Jersey Show, where she would continue her winning ways, being crowned the Reserve All-American Aged Cow, behind the
“I love showing — but what I really love is being a part of everything, doing the work, taking care of the animals and getting them ready to show,” Smith said. “I like missing school to go to the shows.”
In the off-season, Smith and her family have plans to in vitro fertilize Rosabella. Smith hopes to have a few calves to market and a couple to keep for herself, continuing to grow her herd.
“This year feels like a dream,” Smith said. “From her winning at the state show in August to Expo to Louisville. It’ll be hard to have another year as good as this one, but it will be fun trying to do it.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAIRY AGENDA TODAY
Ma Smith (from le ), Mia Smith, Kate Smith and Kamrie Mauer celebrate Miss Ronde Rosabella-ET’s banner day Nov. 8 at the All-American Junior Jersey Show in Louisville, Kentucky. Rosabella was also named the reserve senior and honorable men on grand champion at World Dairy Expo in October.
had our rst deer before we were really ready to go. That’s the second time she’s gotten a deer here at our place.”
The tradition at Hardie-Quall Family Farms is that after a morning of hunting, a hot bowl of chili awaits the hunters.
“Every year Andy and I get up early and start to get the chili ready,” Hardie-Quall said. “It’s a recipe that was Andy’s aunt’s that was passed down to me. My sister will come up on opening weekend and she and I will handle milking cows so Andy can head to the woods with his family.”
After the opening weekend traditions, Quall uses the rest of the deer hunting season to instill those traditions with his boys, 4-year-old Cedric and 18-month-old Jamesen. From the time the boys were 6 months old, Quall would get them geared
DAN WACKER/DAIRY STAR
Andy Quall and his sons, Jamesen (held) and Cedric, head to the woods Nov. 25 on their farm near Blair, Wisconsin. Quall and his wife, Claudia Hardie-Quall, milk 35 cows on a grass-fed organic dairy.
up in orange and take them to the woods during hunting season.
“I never have a plan that we’ll get something, a lot of times we’ll just sit,” Quall said. “But I try to make it fun for them. We build it up, they get out their orange and it creates some excitement. If they see a squirrel, or a leaf moves and catches their eye, they get excited and it’s pretty awesome.”
To enhance their excitement, Quall has made placing and reviewing trail cameras a family event.
“The three of us go out and set up the cameras,” Quall said. “We’ll go out and get the camera chips and we have a chip reader in the house that we’ll look at the deer and wildlife and that really helps build it up.”
Quall said he wants continue the family traditions of farming and deer hunting.
“That’s why we’re still dairy farming,” he said.” Quality time on the farm and in the woods is important to us. Growing up on the farm helps them understand how life works. There are ups and downs, life and death, and this helps create a better understanding of all that.”
Dairy Summit highlights on-farm research
Feed intake, body condition, methane emissions measured
By Stacey Smart stacey.s@dairystar.com
ARLINGTON, Wis. — The Dairy Innovation Hub held its fth annual Dairy Summit Nov. 20 on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Through poster sessions, research presentations and panel discussions, the summit highlighted examples of the latest hub-funded research taking place at UW-Madison, UW-Platteville and UWRiver Falls to help meet the challenges facing today’s dairy community.
Approximately 200 legislators, researchers, campus afliates, students, dairy professionals and farmers attended. In addition, 100 people attended virtually. University researchers, graduate students and farmers presented preliminary ndings on nine research projects during the opening panel and research introductions.
After lunch, the summit transitioned to two tour opportunities showcasing hub investments at the Arlington Agricultural Research Station and in UW–Madison campus research facilities.
At Arlington, visitors experienced several tour stops, starting with the Emmons Blaine Dairy Cattle Center. Here, researchers discussed studies they are conducting using articial intelligence and barn camera footage to determine body condition and locomotion scores;
specialized gates for measuring feed intake and feed efciency; and equipment to measure me-thane emissions from cows’ breath.
In the rst barn, Joao Dorea explained how articial intelligence can provide real-time animal monitoring through a computer vision system. More than 100 cameras are installed in the barn, some of which measure the body shape and body weight of cows to detect disease.
One project is a study of the transition period, with a focus on metabolic diseases. The majority of
metabolic diseases in dairy cows occur during the transition period, which spans from three weeks before calving to three weeks after calving, Dorea said.
“One way to monitor for potential health problems during this period is to look to the body condition score,” he said. “The severity of negative energy balance can increase the risk of various peripartum disorders, including ketosis, hypocalcemia, retained placenta, metritis, endometritis and displaced abomasum.”
Dorea said economic losses for these diseases can be substantial, as
investments in rst-lactation animals may not be fully recouped if the animals are culled, in addition to treatment costs.
Body condition score is a subjective measurement on a 5-point scale that is difcult to measure consistently and systematically in large dairy operations, Dorea said.
“The problem with subjectively assigning a score is that people may not have time on a dairy to watch cows and score them for body condition,” he said.
STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
Cows eat from a specialized feeding gate Nov. 20 at the Emmons Blaine Dairy Ca le Center near Arlington, Wisconsin.
The cows are part of a feed intake trial taking place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison funded by the Dairy Innovaon Hub.
Joao Dorea explains how he and his team use cameras and ar cial intelligence to detect disease through changes in a cow’s body shape Nov. 20 near Arlington, Wisconsin. The team collects data 21 days, 14 days, and seven days before calving to determine if there is a change in body condi on score to help predict if a cow is suscep ble to certain diseases, such as ketosis.
“The other problem with this method is the inability to physically see the subtle changes in body shape. This is what we dis-covered when using cameras.”
The team collects data 21 days, 14 days and seven days before calving to determine if there is a change in body shape. The cameras map the whole shape of the cow, with images providing a 3-D map of the animal from above. For example, a cow that was visually scored a 4 at 21 and 14 days before calving revealed differences in shape on the computer image, illustrating the signicance of the technology.
“The difference was minimal and not possible to observe through human vision, but it may be relevant to detect a cow that might get sick,” Dorea said.
In his experiment, Dorea utilized pre-partum data to detect sub-clinical ketosis in dairy cows at least seven days before its onset.
“It would be helpful if we could accurately classify cows so we would know at least seven days before calving which cows would and would not have sub-clinical ketosis after calving,” Dorea said.
Cameras also track feed bunk behaviors. They compute time spent eating, the number of visits and the time between visits.
“We take this information and combine it with the body shape to make predictions,” Dorea said. “Every time the animal accesses feed, we know they are there eating, and we compute that behavior and use the info to detect diseases.”
The barn also includes cameras that measure mobility, focusing on walking speed, stride length and duration, and head movement. All angles of the animal are examined to as-sign mobility scores and detect animals with problems. How the cow’s spine behaves as she walks is also analyzed.
“Maybe a cow that is healthy will walk straight, while a cow that is not healthy will have rump movement and will not walk straight,” Dorea said. “We can capture that. And that’s what we use to classify locomotion scores very accurately.”
In another barn, feed efciency trials are being conducted on one pen using specialized feeding equipment and gates. Data is generated from 64 cows that eat from 32 feeders.
Luiz Ferraretto and Francisco Peñagaricano explained how the equipment monitors individual intake and feeding behaviors. Ferraretto said they can control which cow goes through which feeding gate, and the system records which cow ate from which gate
and how much she ate.
“Every time a cow enters the system, it’s recording,” he said. “We can collect the data and start calculating intake. We care about intake because there is a linear relationship between intake and production. We want cows to produce more milk with lower intake for better efciency.”
Their study is also looking at how different diets and ingredients affect emissions as well as energy and metabolism based on body weight.
“We’re trying to select cows that produce the same amount of milk and consume less feed,” Peñagaricano said. “When a farmer produces more milk but uses less feed, it affects the protability of the farm and will also affect the environmental impact of that farm.”
Peñagaricano said a new challenge they are working on is to reduce methane emissions.
“As a geneticist, my goal is to reduce methane emissions through breeding,” he said. “To do that, we rst need to measure emissions, which we are doing with the GreenFeed system.”
The cow puts her head inside the gate which tracks air and measures methane emissions, including carbon dioxide, oxygen and hydrogen. The farm is running 8-week trials to attain adequate measurements for each cow.
“We need her to stay in at least two minutes to have a good record,” Peñagaricano said. “She can stay in for 4-5 minutes six times a day and must wait two hours in between visits. Methane emissions change during the day, and we want to make sure we are measuring her throughout the day and getting precise data measurement.”
The system reports that cows are producing an average of 450 grams of methane per day. There are also cows producing more than 600 grams and less than 300 grams.
“It’s a beautiful variation,” Peñagaricano said. “Twenty-ve percent of that variation is due to genetic factors. We are condent that in a couple of years, we will have genetic evaluations for methane emissions. We need to introduce methane as an economic selection.”
Peñagaricano and Ferraretto are nding that feed efciency and methane are favorably related.
“Cows that are more feed efcient tend to emit less methane,” Peñagaricano said. “We already have feed efciency into the economic selection index. If we get methane too, we could push both traits in the same direction at the same time.”
STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
Trump to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico
In addition to China, President-elect Donald Trump is now calling for tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports. Trump said he would impose a 25% tariff on all products coming into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico, starting on his rst day on the job. On Truth Social, Trump said, “This tariff will remain in effect until such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country.”
President Biden is asking Trump to rethink his threat of additional tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Biden said these two neighboring countries are our closest allies, and additional tariffs would be counterproductive.
Support for Rollins
President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for agriculture secretary is receiving praise from farm groups. Texas Farm Bureau Director of Communications Gary Joiner thinks Brooke Rollins’ background and familiarity with the Trump administration is a plus.
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Canadian dairy policy under scrutiny Canadian Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay expects the Trump administration to focus on its bilateral beef trade and dairy supply management system. MacAulay said trade relations were an issue during Trump’s rst term but were resolved with the passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
‘Yes’ vote encouraged for Federal Orders
By Don Wick Columnist Ag Insider
A lengthy process to reform Federal Milk Marketing Orders is moving toward a producer vote. A national hearing process lasted nearly 50 days in late 2023 and early 2024. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service issued its recommendation this past summer, followed by a public comment period. Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative Vice President Heidi Fischer said this is an important step.
“The vote’s coming up by the end of December, so we’re hoping that that will pass,” Fischer said. “Change hasn’t happened in almost 15 years. We were hoping for a bit more change, but we’re hoping this will open the door.”
USDA cabinet nominee announced
Texas native Brooke Rollins is the agriculture secretary nominee. President-elect Donald Trump made the announcement Saturday after speculation surfaced Friday that former Georgia Senator Kelly Loefer was the pick. Rollins is the president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute. She grew up on a farm, graduated with a degree in agricultural development at Texas A&M University and was a White House policy advisor in Trump’s rst term. When making the announcement, Trump said Rollins would “spearhead the effort to protect American farmers.”
Bringing White House experience to USDA
Agriculture secretary nominee Brooke Rollins led President Trump’s Domestic Policy Council and has White House experience with domestic and global environmental issues. Policy Solutions President Jay Truitt appreciates her international credentials.
“That was during the same timeframe that they were going through the Paris Accords, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,” said Truitt. “She was probably one of the lawyers that would look through what they could legally do and not legally do; that was her job in the past, and now she’ll be doing it from the department of agriculture.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a vocal critic of modern farming practices and wants to crack down on how food is produced. Truitt believes Rollins will be able to stand up to Kennedy’s inuence.
“I think one of the things she’ll bring to the table is making sure everyone stays in their lane,” he said. “I like the idea that Mr. Kennedy is going to have to see her before he can see anybody else, and that’s a good thing.”
“It’s not much of a surprise when you see how she ts within the Trump administration’s goals going forward with their cabinet picks; I think she brings a passion for agriculture,” Joiner said. “She talks about Texas Farm Bureau, 4-H and FFA being the reason she could attend college.”
‘Dairy cliff’ is possible
If Congress does not address the farm bill before the end of the year, agricultural policy will revert to permanent law. Parity would push milk prices to more than $49 per hundredweight, more than double the current Class I price. If that ‘dairy cliff’ happens, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said there would be a recession in the next week. Speaking at a dairy farm in New York State, Schumer said Senate Agriculture Committee Debbie Stabenow and ranking member John Boozman will have a permanent farm bill ready before the end of the year. However, Washington insiders indicate a one-year farm bill extension is more likely.
Record dairy consumption
Americans consumed a record amount of dairy products in 2023, with butter and cheese consumption at historic highs. USDA reports per capita consumption of dairy products reached 661 pounds per person in 2023, an increase of 7 pounds per person over the previous year and matching the record set in 2021. U.S. cheese consumption totaled 42.3 pounds per person and butter consumption was 6.5 pounds. Both were record highs. Yogurt sales were up, while uid milk and ice cream sales declined.
November hay prices reported
According to the Hay Market Demand and Price Report for the Upper Midwest, prime alfalfa hay averaged $171 per ton for large squares. That is down from $237 one year ago. The price for large rounds is averaging $112 per ton, which is nearly half the price seen one year ago. Grade 1 hay is valued at $115 per ton for large squares, down from $213 per ton one year ago.
YoBark introduced
A new dairy product is coming to a supermarket near you. General Mills and Midwest Dairy checkoff partnered to create YoBark, a refrigerated snack that combines the creaminess of yogurt with the crunchy texture of granola. Dairy Management Inc. has been working with General Mills on this concept since 2021.
Dairy quiz bowl champions
A team from Wisconsin won the North American Invitational 4-H Dairy Quiz Bowl Contest in Louisville, Kentucky. The four-person team is from Polk County. Polk County also won the national contest in 2011 and 2019.
Trivia challenge
The rumen is the rst compartment of a cow’s stomach. That answers our last trivia question. For this week’s trivia, what is the last compartment of a cow’s stomach called? We’ll have the answer in our next edition of the Dairy Star.
Don Wick is owner/broadcaster for the Red River Farm Network of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Wick has been recognized as the National Farm Broadcaster of the Year and served as president of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting. Don and his wife, Kolleen, have two sons, Tony and Sam, and ve grandchildren, Aiden, Piper, Adrienne, Aurora and Sterling.
324G, CAH, iOS, 1,400
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Making the most of beef-on-dairy
Embryos improve conception rates, calf value
By Stacey Smart stacey.s@dairystar.com
LOMIRA, Wis. — For the past six years, Elsinger Farms has utilized beef semen to manage dairy heifer inventories. Over the past 18 months, the farm has expanded its beef-on-dairy program to include beef embryos. Today, more than half of the herd is mated to produce beef calves.
“Our primary reason for using embryos is to settle cows that are hard to breed back,” Brenda Elsinger said. “We’re hoping this is a way of keeping our girls in the herd a little bit longer.”
“These cows cannot have any health events in the rst 60 days of lactation,” Elsinger said. “Cows that get metritis, for example, are not candidates.”
Elsinger uses SimVitro HerdFlex embryos by Simplot Animal Sciences, a division of the J.R. Simplot Company. Simplot provides full-beef embryos to dairy farms through a partnership with Select Sires Inc. Embryos are created from a full-beef sire and a full-beef dam to deliver a calf that adds value through improved feed efciency, rate of gain, ribeye area and marbling.
“Dairy farmers are using beef embryos for a variety of reasons, and the benets to each differ on what their goals are,” said Jeremy Howard, senior sales and marketing manager at Simplot Animal Sciences.
Elsinger and her husband, Jeff, farm with their son, Mike, as well as a team of employees near Lomira. Candidates for embryos include rst-lactation animals beyond a third service; second- and third-lactation animals past their second service; and cherry-picked fourth-lactation cows.
“From selling a day-old calf to selling an animal hanging on the rail, dairy farmers are capturing the value of beef embryos all the way through the management system.”
Simplot collects ovaries from Black Angus females that come through their processing facility to be harvested for beef. The ovaries are aspirated and run through the in vitro fertilization process
Turn to A CLOSER LOOK | Page 12
Jeremy Howard Simplot Animal Sciences
where they are paired with high-dollar, high-terminal indexing beef bulls from Select Sires. The embryos are then frozen for later use. Howard said most collection occurs in the West and is from a western-type beef cow, which is a moderate-sized female weighing 1,200 pounds or less.
The embryo calves are turning out to be a short and stocky animal, but they are born weighing around 80 pounds, Elsinger said. The embryos are mated specically for use in dairy cows with emphasis placed on calving ease.
The rst beef embryo calves produced through Simplot’s partnership with Select Sires were born in Minnesota around 2018. Select Sires is Simplot’s exclusive distributor in the U.S.
Howard said Simplot works with either the dairy’s technicians or the co-op’s technicians to train them how to do embryo transfer.
Eric Gudex, an A.I. technician with Select Sires, has been putting in beef embryos since April 2023.
“It’s not a huge part of what I do, but it is a piece of the pie,” Gudex said. “I probably put in 75-100 beef embryos per month.”
About 90% of those embryos are Angus. Gudex is putting the embryos into Holsteins, and Elsinger is one of his customers. Like Elsinger, a few of his customers are using
are shorter and stockier with bigger frames than dairy beef crossbred calves.
the embryos on repeat breeders to improve a cow’s chances of getting pregnant.
“Their value is getting that repeat cow bred, and the added gravy on top would be the value of that calf,” Howard said.
Several of Gudex’s customers are nishing these beef cattle while another is selling them as wet calves and earning about $100 extra per calf.
For another one of Gudex’s customers, beef embryos are
an experiment to stay ahead of the curve.
Jersey breeders are seeing the greatest difference in price for a straight beef calf versus a dairy-beef cross. Keeping in mind that pricing is regionspecic, Howard said a JerseyAngus or Jersey-Charolais cross is bringing $300-$500 for a day-old calf whereas straight beef calves from a Jersey cow are bringing $800-$850. This could be even higher in an
eastern market, Howard said. Holstein crossbred calves are selling in the $800 range to as high as $1,000.
“(In the current beef-ondairy calf market) it’s probably not as advantageous for a Holstein breeder to use beef embryos,” Howard said. “Most breeders retain these animals throughout the system and see that value in increased feed efciency.”
The market outlook for
beef cattle is promising, Howard said, with prices projected to remain high into 2026.
“The beef herd is not really rebuilding yet, and that has a major impact on those prices,” he said. “The dairy heifer shortage is another factor. I have heard we have at least 2-3 more years of seeing increased prices for calves.”
Howard is seeing Holstein breeders use beef embryos primarily on repeat breeders and to improve conception rates during times of heat stress. He said there are dairies seeing a 10%-15% increase in reproductive rates when using beef embryos instead of semen during heat stress.
“One herd’s conception rate was high enough that they adopted this practice across the herd in the summer to maximize value,” Howard said.
When creating embryos for use in Jerseys, Simplot uses high-indexing sires that have a low birth weight and high calving ease. When looking at birth weight in beef cows, Howard said if the Expected Progeny Difference is a negative number, such as -12, that would be considered a smaller birth weight than 0. On calving ease direct, if it is 0 versus 14, the 14 is going to be much higher in calving ease than the 0.
Turn to A CLOSER LOOK | Page 13
PHOTO SUBMITTED
A Black Angus bull calf stands on a bed of straw Dec. 2 at Elsinger Farms near Lomira, Wisconsin. The calf is the result of a full-beef embryo, and Brenda Elsinger said these calves
embryos to se le repeat breeders in the hopes of keeping cows in the herd longer.
“We use some bulls that are 14 or 15 for calving ease direct and negative 3 and 4 on birthweights for Jerseys, so they’re going to be much smaller calves,” Howard said. “These would be considered heifer bulls in the beef industry. For Holsteins, we can go with a little higher birthweight EPDs.”
Simplot can customize the breed composition of the embryos via the sire used if a volume requirement is met. Howard said for example they have a customer who specically wants SimAngus embryos.
Elsinger’s use of embryos is limited, with only a couple of embryo calves born per month. Some months, a halfdozen embryo calves are born. The embryos Elsinger uses are sired by Black Angus and Red Angus bulls.
“We are focusing primarily on bulls that sire low birthweight and good feed conversion, as well as good carcass quality,” Gudex said.
The price differential in raising straight beef cattle versus crossbreds is something Elsinger said will be seen by her daughter who nishes several head of beef cattle per month.
Beef animals are raised to a certain age at Elsinger’s farm before moving onto pasture at her daughter’s place. The rst group of straight beef went to pasture the week before Thanksgiving.
“That will be the telltale sign, to
see if it will be more protable on my daughter’s end,” Elsinger said. “That’s when we’ll nd out what the nished product is going to look like versus a crossbred. We saw a difference in the rst group that went out. They were shorter and stockier with a lot bigger frames. They were wide, not tall. This winter, we’ll see if they excel in hardiness, too.”
When considering if beef embryos are right for a dairy operation, Gudex said farmers need to know what their end goal is and how they plan to capitalize. He said the farm should have a solid reproduction program to start with.
“Most farmers probably benet the most when looking to nish these animals themselves,” Gudex said. “The daily gain and cost to nish should be more efcient with a full-blood beef versus a crossbreed. The problem in the Midwest may be trying to nd packers, as that is a small part of our world here.”
Elsinger feels cows are sticking around a little longer since using beef embryos, however, she said they are not far enough into the process to know for sure if a cow would have stayed or not.
“We’re hoping that with the extra effort we’re putting into keeping her around, it will make a difference,” she said.
PHOTO SUBMITTED
Brenda Elsinger and Eric Gudex review possible embryo transfer recipient candidates at Elsinger Farms near Lomira, Wisconsin. For the past 18 months, Elsinger has been using beef
from our side our side OF THE
How did you modify your old barn and what is its new use?
Steve Case (left) pictured with grandson, Archie, and daughter-inlaw, Brittney Janesville, Wisconsin Rock County 200 cows
Tell us about your old barn. The barn was here when I bought the farm in 1977. I milked 54 cows in it until it was destroyed by a re in 1985. I built a new tiestall barn that same year. It was the same size but has a round roof instead of a gable roof and a ramp going up the side with storage for 420 big square bales of hay and straw, which is very efcient for us.
How many generations milked in the barn, and what years were the barn in use? One to two generations milked in the barn from 1985 until 2005 when we built a new facility.
How is the barn used now, and what are your plans with the structure? The barn is used to house our calves that are on milk in individual pens. The barn is tunnel-ventilated and has room for 48 calves.
How did you decide what to do with your barn? After visiting World Dairy Expo one year, we decided to remodel the barn when we saw these calf pens that we liked.
What work went into modifying the barn? We remodeled the barn in 2007. There was not much work involved. We took out all the stalls, but we still use the barn cleaner to remove bedding from the calf pens. The barn is very clean inside. We feed calves with an automated milk mixer and starter.
What did you build to replace the barn? In 2005, we built a new freestall barn for 120 cows and a double-8 herringbone milking parlor.
Tell us about your farm. We have a nice family dairy farm — Pineview Dairy — and have all concrete on our farm, so there is no more mud. I farm with my wife, Liz, and our son, Craig, and his wife, Brittney. Our son, Jeremy, and our daughters, Amy and Erica, come to help if needed. We have seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren but soon to be six. We ship our milk to Decatur Dairy.
Greg Larson
Summit Valley Farms
Norwalk, Wisconsin
Monroe County
500 cows
Tell us about your old barn. It is a post frame barn built in 1978 I believe. It was a 100-cow tiestall barn.
How many generations milked in the barn, and what years were the barn in use? The previous owners milked in that barn until 2008.
How is the barn used now, and what are your plans with the structure? The barn is currently used for prefresh and post-fresh free stalls with a maternity pen.
How did you decide what to do with your barn? I did not make the decisions, it was modied when I purchased the farm.
What work went into modifying the barn? I did knock out the mats and replaced it with deep bedded sand stalls.
What did you build to replace the barn? There are 72 stalls in the barn with three separate pens. It is skid loader scraped with tunnel ventilation. It’s connected to the holding pen so it works well for special care cows next to the parlor.
Tell us about your farm. I purchased this farm in 2022 and milk 500 cows in a double-12 parallel parlor with individual identication and meters. All cows have activity and rumination tags. Our milk is shipped to Foremost Farms USA. Myself and my valued employees run the dairy and crop farm. We farm 4,250 acres of corn, soybeans and alfalfa.
Marty Vanderstappen
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Walworth County 550 cows
Tell us about your old barn. Our barn was built in the early 1900s. The bottom level was the milking area, and the hay mow featured a ramp for vehicle access. The barn has always been a stanchion barn. It sat empty for about 10 years before my grandparents purchased the property in 1970. My grandpa and his kids renovated the barn to its full milking capacity of 56 stalls.
How many generations milked in the barn, and what years were the barn in use? Three generations milked in this barn from 1970–2008, including my grandparents, my parents, and my sisters and me. In the early 2000s, we reinforced the haymow oor to withstand the weight of a skid loader. We drive it into that building to this day to store hay and straw. We had 56 stalls but were milking 150 cows and doing three switches when we built a milking parlor. The old milk barn was tired, and my dad couldn’t keep up with the stanchions breaking off. Small repairs were ever-growing because the barn was worn out. The building itself is still in great standing, however.
How is the barn used now, and what are your plans with the structure? The barn is used as a calf nursery/facility and houses all our calves on milk. It’s a dualpurpose building with calves on the bottom and hay and straw on top. My sister, Adrianna, takes care of all the calves. We also retrot our old milk house for her calf-feeding equipment. We house 66 calves comfortably between six group pens with eight calves each and three group pens of six calves each. We also have ve individual pens in case we notice that a calf is falling behind or is ill. We reduced the number of individual pens recently from 10 to ve and added another pen of six. We use a Milk Taxi to deliver warm, whole milk to the calves through a Milk Bar.
How did you decide what to do with your barn? It is important for us to utilize every building we can because it is hard to give up productive land for a building when you can repurpose these structures that have stood the test of time. We decided to turn the barn into a calf barn and put in individual pens to hold 46 calves.
We later transitioned to group housing after my dad got the idea when he and my sister visited his cousin’s farm in Pennsylvania. His cousin raved about the ease of use and ease of not having to clean individual pails. By setting up group housing, we could t more calves in that same space and gain square footage for each calf. We were able to make the pens a little bigger and not intrude on the center alleyway so we could still get the skid loader down the middle. It is easier to clean pens. Before, we had to clean each one by hand. Now, we move one gate and drive the skid loader in.
What work went into modifying the barn? In 2009, my dad worked with hired hands and took out all the stanchions to put in individual calf pens. We lled the gutter with concrete to create a straight oor. In 2014, we removed all but 10 pens and added large group pens. In 2021, we modied the support structure of the barn. The aging posts positioned every 8 feet had rusted at the bottom while our skid loaders have also gotten bigger. We took out those old, round posts and put in a concrete pillar with steel posts every 16 feet. We reinforced the beams to carry that load, and it’s been a huge game changer. The barn looks more open. Adrianna had an idea to remove the ll from the gutter and put in drain tile, which we covered with gravel. Now, the calf pens drain or leach into the old gutter that goes into the manure pit. The result is a drier bedding pack for the calves.
What did you build to replace the barn? My parents built a new facility in 2008 that consisted of a double-10 herringbone parlor with a holding area and an addition to our existing freestall barn built in 2002 that originally had 120 stalls. We added 100 cows to get up to 250 milking at that time. We have done two more expansions to the freestall barn since then.
Tell us about your farm. I farm with my parents, Mart and Nancy, and my sister, Adrianna, at Dutch Made LLC. I give credit to my wife, Kathleen, for putting up with the crazy lifestyle of a farmer. I’m also fortunate she is a numbers person. We have six full-time and four part-time employees. We are blessed with a great group of people. If it wasn’t for our employees, none of this would be possible. We market our milk through Dairy Farmers of America. We want to make sure everything is at peak performance to maximize production and excel at the number of cows we have.
Heather and Brandon Moore (Pictured with Cassidy, Palmer, Sutton, Cooper and Tucker.)
Maquoketa, Iowa
Jackson County 35 cows
Tell us about your old barn. We built a low-cost tiestall in 2014 to begin milking cows. It is a pole barn structure and has 50 comfort stalls. We purchased a used pipeline and used bulk tank. When we began building, we chose this type of structure so it would be easy to retrot as our dairy grew or changed. We have always been diversied, so we thought it could become housing for other live-stock or would lend itself well to another ag use if dairying didn’t work out.
How many generations milked in the barn, and what years were the barn in use? Despite not being rst-generation farmers, we are on a rst-generation farm. Brandon is the rst dairy farmer in his family. We purchased our farm in 2011 without a milking facility and opted to nd an initial lowcost way to begin milking cows.
How is the barn used now, and what are your plans with the structure? barn has many uses. Two years ago, we stopped using the barn for milking. We installed a furnace that we purchased from a house that was torn down, installed it, and keep the barn set around 45 degrees. We have large stalls, so we made them into kidding stalls for our son’s goat herd and move our calves from outdoor huts into the barn in the winter. In the summer, the barn gets used for show animals and bedding packs. This summer, we let cows use a portion of it as free stalls to stay under the fans. We did some small retrots this winter so that we can again house cows. That will include hanging a curtain so that we are still able to heat a portion of the barn for kidding pens.
How did you decide what to do with your barn? A lot of trial and error, based on the needs of our farm business. We do not have a lot of outbuildings for our farm, so we spend a lot of time being creative in meeting the needs of our people and animals.
What work went into modifying the barn? We began milking cows in 2014 in the tiestall barn. As start-up farmers with start-up payments, 2015 and 2016 were pretty difcult. In 2017, we decided to open a local food shop in our hometown to sell cheese that we were having custom-made from our milk. By 2022, we had outgrown two store locations and renovated a 4,600 square-foot store, opened a second shop (and have outgrown that), opened a meat locker, and were in the midst of opening our own creamery. During that time, the neighbor kid who was milking for us had graduated, and I was doing most of the milking alone, in addition to running the stores. Brandon was working full time, custom feeding cattle and helping
with milking. We were also expecting our fth child. We had cut the herd from 50 cows to 35 cows to help with the labor required to run all the enterprises. Brandon came up with the idea to price out a used Lely robot. We extended the milk house into a robot room where the cows come from sand lots to use the robot. It has been trial and error to come up with a way to keep the cows and the robot warm in the Iowa winter. The rst year with the robot was the winter of 2022-2023. About 60 days post-startup, we shut the robot down for a few days and returned to milking in the tie stall. Last winter, we outwintered the cows with a bedded pack, but it was not really the best t. This year, we are adding a door to the side of the barn and adding a lean-to to keep the cows under the roof from the robot to tiestall. We have portioned off the back half of the tie stall for cow bedding, and the front will still be heated for kidding and calf pens.
What did you build to replace the barn? For this year, we are keeping the comfort stalls and making minimal changes to the cow stall area, which will be com-
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POLY-TANKS and TOTES
“We started using Udder ComfortTM 15 years ago. It was the best thing we could have done to make a tremendous difference. People try to get us to use other products, but they don’t ever stand up to the results with Udder Comfort,” says third generation dairywoman Michelle Hasheider-Burianek of Elm Farms in southern Illinois.
“We use this routinely on our fresh cows when they calve in, they are separated after going through the robot, and we apply the Udder Comfort at the head gates.
“We do this for 2 to 3 days; heifers 4 to 5 days. Udders milk out nice and evenly, and we save money by shipping more milk with less need for treatment,” she says.
“If we see a hard quarter or a conductivity spike, we grease her up with Udder Comfort. Any animal in the sick pen also gets it,” Michelle explains.
“Our kids are really involved in showing, and they enjoy it. So, we also use Udder Comfort on our show cows. I’ll even use it on a swollen hock, it’s that good,” she adds.
Generations of success with Udder Comfort: Michelle Hasheider-Burianek and daughter Teagan (left and right) 3rd and 4th generation at ELM FARMS, OKAWVILLE, ILLINOIS 125 cows, 2 Robots
- Michelle Hasheider-Burianek
TOP PERFORMERS
Koesters focus on genetics to achieve high production
How many times a day do you milk, and what is your current herd average, butterfat and protein? We milk three times a day. Our current herd average is 35,493 pounds of milk, 1,595 pounds of butterfat and 1,135 pounds protein, with tests of 4.5% butterfat and 3.2% protein.
Describe your housing and milking facility. All cows are housed in a 6-row, sand-bedded freestall barn and milked in a double-12 parallel parlor. Cows are housed in two groups: 2-year-olds and fresh cows in one group and cows in their second lactation and higher in another group. All cows receive the same ration. Heifers reside in a separate barn on a bedded pack until 8 months of age before moving to sand-bedded free stalls.
Who is part of your farm team, and what are their roles? Dan and Amber Koester farm with their children — Lance, Kyle, Brent and Bria — as well as Lance’s wife, Cynthia, and several employees. Dan is the herdsman and Amber helps with calves and babysits the grand-
of
are
children. Lance manages crops and mixes feed; Kyle is also a herdsman, on the milking crew and manages the farm business; Brent helps with calves, milk-
ing and crops; Bria helps with calves and milking; and Cynthia is on the milking crew. The farm’s employees include Caleb Heck, Dan Cary, Tito Hurtado,
Dan Ziegler and Casie Mawanda, who help with milking and crops.
What is your herd health program? We conduct herd health with our veterinarian, Dr. Abe Trone of Lena Veterinary Clinic, every Monday morning. We follow a consistent vaccination program in which animals are usually given one vaccine at a time. Heifers receive Bovi-Shield, SRP and Ultrabac at 8 months and 12 months of age. Lactating cows get BoviShield and Endovac after they freshen. Cows receive Vira Shield at dry off and SRP and Endovac during the dry period.
What does your dry cow and transition program consist of? Cows are dry for 7 weeks and housed in the freestall barn where they are fed a straw-based, dietary cation-anion difference diet. They start in the far-off dry cow pen and move to the closeup pen 3-4 weeks before calving. When cows are close to calving, they move to the calving pen, which features a bedded pack. They enter the milk cow group 24 hours post-calving.
STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
The Koester family — Brent (from le ), Cynthia, Lance, Kyle and Dan — gather in the freestall barn Nov. 21 at Koester Dairy near Dakota, Illinois. The Koesters milk 400 cows with a herd average
35,493 pounds of milk, 1,595 pounds of bu erfat and 1,135 pounds of protein. Not pictured
Dan’s wife, Amber, and their daughter, Bria.
TRACK TRACTORS
HIGHEST QUALITY SHAVINGS
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Contact one of the following dealers to learn more:
IOWA
Prairie Land Ag Supply Inc.
Rock Valley, IA
712-476-9290
United Dairy Systems, Inc.
West Union, IA 563-422-5355
Monticello, IA 319-465-5931
WISCONSIN
Advanced Dairy Spring Valley, WI
715-772-3201
Bob’s Dairy Supply
Dorchester, WI
715-654-5252
Ederer Dairy Supply Plain, WI
608-546-3713
DeLaval Dairy Service Kaukauna, WI
866-335-2825
Joe’s Refrigeration Inc. Withee, WI
715-229-2321
Mlsna Dairy Supply Inc. Cashton, WI 608-654-5106
Professional Dairy Services Arlington, WI
608-635-0268
Redeker Dairy Equipment Brandon, WI
920-346-5579
The Scharine Group Inc. Whitewater, WI
800 472-2880
Mt Horeb, WI
800-872-3470
MINNESOTA & SOUTH
DAKOTA
Farm Systems
Melrose, MN
320-256-3276
Brookings, SD
800-636-5581
Advanced Dairy Mora, MN
320-679-1029
Pierz, MN
320-468-2494
St. Charles, MN
507-932-4288 Wadena, MN
218-632-5416
Take cow-flow to another level
What is the composition of your ration, and how has that changed in recent years? Our milk cow ration consists of corn silage, haylage, ground corn, gluten pellets, bean meal, cottonseed, protein mix and molasses. We feed once a day and push up feed about 10 times a day. We have not really changed our ration other than to make minor adjustments as needed.
Tell us about the forages you plant and detail your harvest strategies. We farm around 1,000 acres and plant haylage and brown midrib corn silage. We do ve cuttings of alfalfa, which we harvest every four weeks on a 28-day cutting schedule. We keep an alfalfa stand for three years. We do all our own harvesting except for chopping corn silage, which we hire a custom operator for. After we take off corn silage, we double-crop rye on a portion of acres to chop for heifer feed and come back with soybeans. This has worked well for us and yields 65 bushels of beans per acre.
What is your average somatic cell count and how does that affect your production? Our somatic cell count averages between 100,000-150,000 throughout the year. We strive to maintain a low cell count, but with higher production, it can be more challenging. We look at SCC and mastitis resistance when picking bulls. Our goal is to use bulls that are under 2.80 for SCC.
What change has created the biggest improvement in your herd average? We have been over 30,000 pounds of milk for a long time, and our production has been pretty consistent for the past 10 years. We have seen the biggest change in production through an increase in components, specically butterfat percent. Years ago, our butterfat was at 3.7%-3.8%. Today, it is 4.5%. A lot of that increase is due to genetics. Every bull we pick has
100% homebred
three mes a day in a double-12 parallel parlor.
high components; some are extremely high for components.
What technology do you use to monitor your herd? We installed the SenseHub activity monitoring system two years ago, which provides health and reproduction alerts. All cows and breeding-age heifers wear a SenseHub ear tag. The system has helped improve reproduction and helps us identify health issues sooner.
What is your breeding program, and what role does genetics play in your production level? Our goal is to keep increasing the genetic level of our herd. All our animals are genomically tested, and we use this data for matings, ushing and merchandising decisions. We use the top bulls and had our rst animal hit +3000 for Type Production Index a few years ago. Today, we probably have 70-
NEW & USED EQUIPMENT ON HAND
80 animals at that level. We try to focus on making cows with a balance of production, type and health traits. Our current herd favorite, K-Star Renegade Affect-ET, is a perfect example of this. As a 3-year-old, she made 53,320 pounds of milk, 2,678 pounds of butterfat and 1,720 pounds of protein in 365 days, with tests of 5.0% butterfat and 3.2% protein. She scored Excellent 91 with a 93-point mammary system in her second lactation. Her grandson, K-Star-FS Alcatraz-ET, was recently released at Select Sires. We have more than 20 daughters out of Affect with more to come. We do a lot of embryo transfer work, especially on two families that are high in components. We breed for average to above-average stature with enough strength, width and capacity to maintain production.
List three management strategies that have helped you attain your production and component level. Quality forages, cow comfort and genetics. We work with our nutritionist, Gerrit DeBruin, quite a bit to ensure we produce the highest quality forages and feed the highest quality ration. He has been with us since we built our new facility 15 years ago. One thing we’ve changed over the years is to look more at amino acids. To ensure cow comfort, we built our freestall barn with 50-inch-wide stalls that we bed with sand. We installed rubber belting by the feed bunk, which provides nice traction and allows cows to stand on rubber when eating. We also have rubber ooring in the parlor for added comfort for cows while being milked. In the barn, there are fans over the headlocks and on the outside rows as well as above the stalls. We also have sprinklers that run on timers. In addition, we place a lot of emphasis on genetics. When choosing sires, we pick bulls that are over 3200 for Genomic TPI and at least 1.5 for type and udders with an acceptable daughter pregnancy rate. We use high-genomic bulls, and sometimes we use pre-released semen in our in vitro fertilization program.
Tell us about your farm and your plans for the dairy in the next year. Koester Dairy is home to K-Star Registered Holsteins — a 100% homebred herd. Dan is the third generation on the farm, which has been in our family for many years. We ship our milk to Klondike Cheese Company in Monroe, Wisconsin. We have won the Herd of Excellence award eight times and the Progressive Genetics Herd award 33 times. We sell about 100 young dairy cows every year to other dairy producers. In the next year, we plan to continue improving and keeping our cows healthy and producing well. Each day is a new challenge, and we try to do the best we can.
STACEY SMART/DAIRY STAR
Cows stand in the milking parlor Nov. 21 at Koester Dairy near Dakota, Illinois. The registered,
herd is milked
DAIRY ST R THE GREAT 2024
DAY 1: Lee Martinek DAY 2: Harlan Selander DAY 3: Tom Meyer DAY 4: Pam Geier DAY 5: Jason Raths DAY 6: Jennifer Schmelzer
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MINNESOTA
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• Elba Co-op Creamery Elba • 507-796-6571
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• Minnwest Bank Lewiston • 507-523-2161
Keen competition, new experiences
Polk County wins national dairy bowl contest
By Danielle Nauman danielle.n@dairystar.com
AMERY, Wis. — Dairy bowl competition is a rite of passage for many young people involved in 4-H, FFA and junior dairy breed organizations. Dairy bowl is a rigorous competition for knowledge, and the competition creates a sense of camaraderie.
The winners of the 45th Annual North American 4-H Invitational Dairy Quiz Bowl contest, held Nov. 9 in Louisville, Kentucky, hail from Amery, and all agree they have become passionate about dairy bowl for those reasons.
What makes these four champions — Kallie Andersen, Evelyn Braaten, Suki Gatica and Darby Trent — unique is that none hail from a dairy farm. The group is coached by Gwen Dado and Patti Hurtgen.
“It has taken a lot more studying for them to accom-
Na onal Champion 4-H Dairy Bowl Team from Polk County — Kallie Andersen (front, from le ), Evelyn Braaten, Suki Ga ca; (back, from le ) coach Pa Hurtgen, Darby Trent and coach Gwen Dado — celebrate their victory Nov. 9 at the North American 4-H Invita onal Dairy Quiz Bowl contest in Louisville, Kentucky. None of the four team members are from a dairy farm.
plish what they have — none of this knowledge has come to them as supper table conversation,” Dado said. “Their dedication is admirable and has paid off.”
Participating in dairy bowl has been eye-opening for the teammates.
fourth championship team from Wisconsin in the 45year history of the contest.
“The contest itself is great, but there is so much more being taught and learned,” Hurtgen said. Finishing behind the Polk County team in this year’s contest was New York, followed by Virginia and Michigan. Honorable mention went to the teams from Iowa and Georgia. Teams from 15 states across the U.S. participated in the event.
For years, the Dado family has reached out to educate non-farm youth through 4-H and FFA, allowing them to learn about dairy cattle through showing at the Polk County Fair. Andersen and Trent both began learning about dairy cattle by exhibiting.
“Dairy bowl has changed my whole perspective on farming,” Braaten said. “I really didn’t understand it, even living in Wisconsin near farms. Gwen explains everything so we understand it. It’s been an amazing opportunity to learn.”
Polk County has a longstanding tradition of dairy bowl excellence. This team is the third national 4-H championship team produced by the program and marks the
Dado encouraged both girls to join FFA and participate in quiz bowl, and eventually, they became interested in dairy cattle evaluation. Meanwhile Gatica was spurred to join FFA based on her older sister’s experiences.
PHOTO SUBMITTED
The
“Suki invited me to an FFA meeting and promised there would be ice cream,” Braaten said. “That’s when I met Gwen. They wanted to have a dairy judging team and I thought, ‘How hard can that be?’ It was very hard. The rst time I ever saw a cow was at Gwen’s farm, for practice.”
With hard work and determination, the four set about to develop a new skill set.
“Gwen said we could do it, but it would take a lot of effort,” Trent said. “She encouraged us to enroll in 4-H so we could continue on with 4-H judging and dairy bowl.”
The team agreed to meet every Sunday morning at 6:30 to study and practice together for about two hours — a schedule they have adhered to for over two years.
“Our coaches tell us we’re lucky because we’re a very balanced team,” Gatica said. “We’ve been friends for years and know each other well. Being able to meet that often helps.”
Keeping the practices light and enjoyable makes the work seem like less of a chore, Andersen said.
“Our team is denitely what keeps me going,” Andersen said. “Sometimes at our Sunday morning practices, we’re kind of delusional, tired. We’re always making jokes and laughing. It makes it a great time and makes me want to keep learning.”
The quartet enjoyed a taste of success in 2023 when they placed second at the Wisconsin 4-H Dairy Bowl contest in a match that came down to the nal question.
“Being that close inspired us to work harder,” Trent said. “We went back this year and won.”
Some things are easier to learn than others, the four agree.
“I think we all really enjoy repro, learning about the hormones and which parts of the body make certain ones,” Braaten said. “Personally, I’m pretty good with the digestive system — which stomach does what, the gallbladder, liver and kidneys — basic physiology. The biggest area I struggle with is crops. Dirt is not my forte.”
The attention to ne detail is challenging, they all admit.
“When they ask questions with percentages and numbers, keeping it all straight, knowing you have the right numbers is challenging,” An-
dersen said.
Despite their non-farm backgrounds, all four high school juniors are considering future careers in agriculture and life sciences.
“Growing up I never considered anything in ag — I lived in town, with no connections,” Braaten said. “Even though it is my worst subject, I’ve been thinking really hard about studying agronomy and where that could take me.”
Trent plans to begin her post-secondary education at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls with hopes of pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine at a college like Texas A&M University on her way to becoming a large animal veterinarian.
“Working with the animals and the things I’ve learned have really made me feel like that is the right direction,” Trent said.
Andersen is considering attending UW-River Falls as well, seeking a major in animal science, with an interest in becoming a bovine embryologist or a dairy consultant.
The science-based information learned in dairy bowl has inuenced Gatica.
“I’m interested in zoology, and learning about the sciences behind the animals and the diseases,” Gatica said. “Working at Gwen’s farm with animals other than dogs and cats has been helpful with that career path.”
Looking back, none of the four can imagine their high school careers without their dairy-related experiences.
“I’ve been working at the Dado’s farm for over a year, and I have the wonderful opportunity of waking up at 3 a.m., to do calf chores on Saturday mornings,” Gatica said. “It’s much more than feeding calves. Gwen’s teaching me more about the management aspect of running a dairy farm.”
As the team prepares for another contest in December at the Wisconsin Junior Holstein Convention, they encourage others to try new experiences outside their comfort zone.
“Just go with it, go with the ow and try something new,” Braaten said. “I’ve had so many different opportunities being involved in dairy bowl that I wouldn’t have thought I could get. It has been the best experience.”
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Congatulations
Perseverance to dairy Millers named
Wabasha County Farm Family of the Year
By Amy Kyllo amy.k@star-pub.com
PLAINVIEW, Minn. — For John and Kris Miller, who started their dairy farm from scratch, being named Wabasha County Farm Family of the Year is an honor they identify as one of their proudest moments of farming.
The Millers, alongside their son, Thomas, and his wife, Bailey, dairy farm near Plainview. They milk 380 cows and farm 700 acres of owned and rented land, growing corn, alfalfa and canning peas.
“(Farming) it’s a disease,” Miller said. “I worked off the farm for a few years after high school, I went to college, ... and I enjoyed the work I was doing, but all the while, something was missing. ... I had to do it. ... Some people can cure
or live with it and other people just have to go with it.”
Miller grew up on a dairy farm near Conception, but his own farm is a legacy he started in 1991 on a rented farm with 28 cows he purchased from his dad.
“It was frustrating at times,” Miller said. “My friends that were farming were all farming with their dad. ... There were a lot of times I felt like I was out and I was totally alone. I didn’t have the backup. I felt every mistake I made severely.”
The feedback from those around them was also not positive Kris said.
“We had a lot of people tell us, ‘You’ll never make it,’” she said.
Miller agreed.
“(We) never got a lot of moral support,” he said.
After their rst four years, the Millers had increased their cow numbers to almost 50.
They moved to the farm they live at now and increased their herd to 75-80.
In 2000 they purchased the rst 80 acres of their farm and several years later bought 160 more acres.
They built a freestall barn in the early 2000s and at the same time, they increased their herd to about 150-180. They built a double-10 herringbone parlor in 2002-2003. Since then, their herd numbers have grown from within.
The Millers said the biggest challenge they have faced has been nancial.
“There were a couple of times I just didn’t know if it was going to work,” Miller said. “2009 was probably the worst. ... We had to sit down and think, do we really want to keep doing this?”
The Millers said their banker worked on their behalf.
“I remember asking him one time, ‘So why do you
keep doing this for me?’” Miller said. “He goes, ‘I see what you do. You work hard. You get your work done. ... You’re not on vacation. You’re not driving fancy pickups. As long as you keep trying, I’ll keep trying too.’”
Miller said having that type of support made a difference.
“It’s things like that, that just make you work harder,” Miller said. “Having that feeling — that people think you aren’t going to make it or don’t have what it takes — drives you.”
One of the highlights of the Millers’ farming career was receiving the Outstanding Conservationists Award in 2012 by the Minnesota Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts.
AMY KYLLO/DAIRY STAR
Kris and John Miller gather Aug. 2 on their dairy farm near Plainview, Minnesota. The Millers were named the Wabasha County Farm Family of the Year.
AMY KYLLO/DAIRY STAR
John Miller looks at data on the farm computer Aug. 2 at his dairy farm near Plainview, Minnesota. Miller started dairy farming in the early 1990s.
Farming with family
Ninety-four percent of Minnesota dairy farms are family-owned and operated. It is a great blessing that dairy farmers get the opportunity to work with their loved ones and pass the years of hard work onto the next generation.
However, farming with family is challenging, as personal feelings and livelihood needs cloud the business decisions on the farm. It is hard to get out of the daily routine of farming. But it is important for the future of the business to look forward and plan, whether you have an heir coming back to the farm or decide to sell out your dairy business.
the farm. Keep in mind that there is a balance between making everyone feel heard and appreciated, in addition to acknowledging the history of the farm.
By Karen Johnson University of Minnesota
Here are some ideas we must think through to navigate the conversations around the farm planning process. Many of these ideas need some degree of selfreection before translating into a full conversation with family and business partners.
Do you have someone in your farm business who would like to take on more responsibility? If so, it is important to make sure they have the skills and knowhow to be successful. Families should be open to listening to everyone’s ideas. Open conversations provide opportunities to vet the interests and skills of the person who wants to be more active on
Some farms that have been most successful in transitioning to the next generation have created space within the management of the farm for the incoming generation to take on ownership of a part of the farm. For example, the incoming generation can make all the decisions related to the crops or youngstock management. In addition, these farms have also made an effort to include the incoming generation when meeting with the banker, accountant, etc. that help manage the business aspects of the farm.
Farm families often have conict over what they expect the other person to do versus what they intend to do. Having continual discussions on everyone’s expectations for management responsibilities and ownership can help with transparency. It is important that everyone is clear about what they expect from each other in their business. Be sure to write down these expectations to help keep everyone accountable moving forward. Please write these items down as a living document that will change as your business changes.
The vision and goals for the farm need to combine everyone’s wishes and desire for the farm on sensible, common ground. We must recognize that everyone involved wants the farm to succeed. Respect and trust are necessary to nd common ground. Think about the alternatives of your present scenario. What would happen if you decided to expand the dairy? Would you have enough money to keep the farm going? Is the farm bringing in enough income to support everyone involved? If not, what options do you have? Please note that these decisions can’t happen overnight. They need time for additional discussion and research to take place to see if the idea is nancially feasible for the long-term goal of the family farm.
As you begin thinking about the future of your dairy, take time to break away from the daily chores for some self-reection. What are your personal interests? Do your expectations and vision for the farm match that of others on the farm? Don’t know? Have a conversation that asks hard questions. Are you thinking about the future of your farm and how you would like to get there on your own? Ask for help. There are several organizations, such as the Minnesota Dairy Initiative, extension, farm business management or other related
Dana Adams adam1744@umn.edu 320-204-2968
Luciano Caixeta lcaixeta@umn.edu 612-625-3130
Gerard Cramer gcramer@umn.edu 612-625-8184
Marcia Endres miendres@umn.edu 612-624-5391
Brad Heins hein0106@umn.edu 320-589-1711
Nathan Hulinsky huli0013@umn.edu 320-203-6104
Karen Johnson ande9495@umn.edu 320-484-4334
Emily Krekelberg krek0033@umn.edu 507-280-2863
Claire LaCanne lacanne@umn.edu 507-332-6109
Brenda Miller nels4220@umn.edu 320-732-4435
organizations in your state that can help you navigate your farm planning process. Be open to discovering and understanding your wishes rst before having open and honest conversations about the future of your farm with family and business partners.
Save the date: If your farm is looking for ideas on how to keep the farm moving forward, check out the Minnesota “Women in Dairy” event. This event is planned for Thursday, Feb. 13, starting at 6:30 p.m. with a social at the Crow River Winery in Hutchinson, Minnesota. This year’s keynote speaker is Katy Schultz from Fox Lake, Wisconsin. Katy owns Tri-Fecta Farms with her siblings and best friends, Kari and Nick. Currently she is the on-farm manager for “everything with a heartbeat” — livestock, employees and public relations. The family’s farm consists of dairy, cash crops and an on-farm beef market. As a passionate keynote speaker, Katy will share her story about the good, the bad and the manure piles of farming with family. The “Women in Dairy” event is open to anyone. Final details for this program will be shared in early January. All details of this program are developed in partnership between the University of Minnesota Extension and Minnesota Dairy Initiative.
Isaac Salfer ijsalfer@umn.edu 320-296-1357
Jim Salfer salfe001@umn.edu 320-203-6093
Mike Schutz mschutz@umn.edu 612-624-1205
Melissa Wilson mlw@umn.edu 612-625-4276
Isaac Haagen hagge041@umn.edu 612-624-7455
Michael Boland boland@umn.edu 612-625-3013
Sabrina Florentino slpore@umn.edu 507-441-1765
Scott Wells wells023@umn.edu 612-625-8166
Erin Cortus ecortus@umn.edu 612-625-8288
Melissa Runck mkrunck@umn.edu 507-836-1143
On-farm tools to evaluate feeding programs
With harvest season complete, it is the perfect time to assess feed inventory and ne-tune your feeding program. A study by Alex Bach in Spain found that over 50% of performance differences among 47 herds fed identical total mixed rations were unrelated to diet composition, underscoring the critical role of on-farm management and cow observation. Here are practical, cost-effective strategies to optimize dairy cow rations.
Routine forage moisture testing
1-2 inches — is ideal for lactating cows. A watery consistency — 1 or 2 — may suggest low ber intake, toxins or rapid feed passage, while rm manure — 4 or 5 — could indicate low water intake or excessive sorting.
Foamy manure: Foam with gas bubbles signals excessive intestinal fermentation, often caused by acidosis, low ber intake or poor grain digestion.
By Jim Salfer University of Minnesota
Forage moisture content directly impacts ration consistency and nutrient balance. Regular testing helps farmers adjust feed quantities and maintain optimal rations. Frequent testing is especially critical for silage stored in varying conditions, such as hay silage from multiple elds stored in bags. Aim to test hay silage moisture weekly and corn silage monthly. Adjust rations when moisture levels deviate by more than 4% from expected values. Use tools like a microwave, Koster tester or food dehydrator to measure forage moisture levels.
TMR particle size and eating behavior
Observing the bunk after feeding provides valuable insights into feed mixing and cow behavior. Check for consistency along the bunk. Uneven distribution of ingredients or clumps of poorly processed hay indicates mixing issues. Watch cows as they eat. Sorting behavior — where cows sift through feed to consume grain while leaving forage — can lead to imbalanced nutrition.
To evaluate sorting, use a Penn State shaker box to measure TMR particle size. Sample the feed at delivery, a few hours after feeding and again before the next feeding. A difference of more than 10% in particle size distribution over time suggests signicant sorting. To minimize sorting:
— Process hay so particles are 1-2 inches long.
— Ensure the TMR contains enough moisture to bind ingredients.
— Add liquid feed binders, push up feed more frequently or offer multiple daily feedings.
A simple trick to assess additive distribution is to mix colorful candies like jellybeans with feed additives or minerals. If the candies aren’t evenly distributed, adjustments in mixing are needed.
Manure scoring and analysis
Manure provides clues about rumen health, feed digestibility and nutrient absorption. Pay attention to its color, consistency and content.
Color: Dark brown is typical for cows on TMR diets. Unusual colors may indicate health issues. For instance, red or dark black manure may suggest the presence of blood, while mucus can indicate intestinal inammation or acidosis.
Consistency: Manure consistency reects ber intake and digestion. Score manure on a scale of 1 to 5. A score of 3 — porridge-like, stacking
Manure washing
Manure washing helps identify feed digestion inefciencies. Here’s how to do it:
Place a cup of fresh manure in a 6-8 mesh size screen or colander.
Wash the manure under running water, removing digested material until the water runs clear.
Examine the residue for undigested feed particles. Whole grains or seeds suggest inadequate feed processing or poor digestion. Large forage particles (over 1/2 inch) indicate insufcient effective ber intake or rapid rumen feed passage. Also, look for mucin casts, which are tissue fragments from the large intestine. These suggest inammation or chronic acidosis.
Monitor cud chewing
Healthy cows chew their cud as part of the rumination process, which maintains rumen function and ber digestion. Typically, at least 50% of cows lying down in the barn should be actively chewing cud. Lower percentages may indicate suboptimal ber intake or feeding practices.
Track milk components
Milk composition provides another valuable indicator of ration performance. Many Holstein herds now average about 4% milk fat. A drop in milk fat often signals acidosis or insufcient ber digestion. Large rapid changes in milk protein can also indicate dietary imbalances that need to be addressed.
Body condition and locomotion scores
Evaluate body condition scores across different lactation stages to ensure cows are maintaining optimal body condition. Additionally, assess locomotion scores to identify early signs of lameness, which can impact feeding behavior and milk production.
Putting it all together
Using these tools and observations regularly can improve your understanding of how well your rations are working. Listening to what the cows are “saying” through their behavior, manure and production metrics helps identify and address problems early. Incorporating small changes — such as routine forage moisture testing, adjusting TMR processing or using a shaker box — can have a signicant impact on herd health and productivity. These minimal-cost practices empower farmers to create more consistent and effective feeding programs, ultimately improving both animal welfare and protability.
Miller learned conservation from his dad. To prevent soil erosion, one of the rst things Miller did on his current farm was to plan contour strips. He also uses cover crops.
“It’s just the right thing to do,” Miller said. “It was my dad who always says you never really own the land. You’re just given the right to run it for a while. So, I’d like to leave it in as good or better shape for the next generation than what I found (it).”
The family has begun the process of transitioning the farm to Thomas. Their other children, Haley, and her husband, Jake, and Joe and Nick, work off the farm but help as they are able.
“We asked a lot, a lot of questions,” Miller said. “It was a drawn-out process. ... we still have a long way to go, but we
met with lawyers and accountants on how to transfer stuff, looking at tax liabilities and stuff like that and just overall risk. ... (We) talked a lot with the other kids about how things might look.”
The farm is going to be made into a limited liability company in the new year and they plan to begin the process of signing over some assets.
As time goes on, they will slowly transition responsibility and ownership.
“There’s a lot of emotions that go along with it,” Miller said.
The Millers expressed that transitioning is both difcult and good considering they were not sure a few years ago whether another generation would join the farm.
“I still feel like I got a lot of things I want to accomplish in life,” Miller said.
Work smarter Not harder
AMY KYLLO/DAIRY STAR
John Miller sprays the deck of the parlor Aug. 2 during milking at his dairy farm near Plainview, Minnesota. The Millers milk 380 cows.
GIFT YOUR HERD WITH COMFORT
A midnight rendezvous
Nothing wakes a person up faster in the middle of the night than hearing the words, “The cows are out.”
One night earlier this fall, just after midnight, our 5-month-old daughter woke us up wanting to be fed. Jason and I could tell right away that something was amiss outside since the cows and baby calves were bellowing like crazy. I got up and fed the baby while still half asleep, and Jason, also half asleep, grabbed a ashlight and went outside to see what was going on.
After several minutes, Jason came back in and reported exactly what we feared to be true. A pen of 25 heifers got out, and now they were all over the yard. Jason got the side-by-side out of the shed while I nished feeding our baby. Then, I slipped on a pair of shoes and joined Jason on the side-by-side. The rendezvous was underway.
We quickly found one group of heifers near the barn, which caused the cows and baby calves to alert us in the rst place. We have a series of gates that connect all the heifer pens and the barn. The animals that were out belonged in the pen at the bottom end of the series of pens and were currently at the top next to the barn. Thankfully, it was easy enough to open the gate and let them in, and then, one by one, open the other gates to get them back in their appropriate pen.
However, that was only eight heifers; now we had to nd the remaining 17. We drove around for several minutes and found one heifer in the dry cow pasture. Again, we were able to open the gates and, without too much difculty, get her back in the correct pen.
We set out again, this time searching the south side of the corral. We soon found a group of 10 heifers in a meadow just south of the gate the heifers had somehow managed to open themselves. Using the headlights from the side-by-side, we rounded up the heifers and chased them back into the pen with the open gate. We made sure to close the gate and made sure there were not any other gates open.
Then the real search began. We drove around the yard in pitch-black darkness, checking in any building with an open door. Jason and I were both getting that sinking feeling that the remaining six heifers were not in our yard. We drove to almost the bottom of the driveway and then got out to check for tracks. Sure enough, numerous hoof prints were going down the driveway. We had more questions than answers when we got to the bottom of the driveway, as the road we live on is tar, so we were not able to tell which way the heifers went. Our tracking system was not going to help anymore. We drove up to the house and switched from driving our side-byside to Jason’s truck since it had much brighter headlights.
By Tiffany Klaphake Staff Writer
So, we turned around and went the other way, north of our driveway. We drove half a mile and could see some heifers running around in our neighbor’s yard. This neighbor is also a farmer. He used to dairy farm, but now he raises steers and crops. We decided to call him and let him know we were going to be running around his yard trying to get our heifers back. Mind you, it is now just shy of 1 a.m. It took a minute for him to realize what we were trying to say, as it was the middle of the night, but then he said he would come out and help us. Jason and the neighbor jumped on a couple of four-wheelers, and I used the truck to block off the road. After a few minutes, we got them out of the yard and onto the road and were able to walk them back up into our yard. With the momentum of them trotting down the road and up our driveway, we had to open the gate by the barn to chase them in since the gate to their pen has an open meadow next to it. Once inside the pen, we again just had to open the series of gates to get them back into their correct pen. Whew. Mission accomplished.
We had a 50/50 shot. Did the cattle go to the north or to the south? We decided to try to the south, as there is an alfalfa eld just on the other side of the meadow where we found the second batch of heifers. No luck.
We thanked the neighbor for his help and laughed about the ordeal for a couple of minutes and then said good night. When Jason and I got back in the house, we said a prayer that all the animals were back home safe and sound and for having helpful neighbors.
Homemade Christmas
During the cooler months, sewing is my favorite stress reliever. I got hooked on making bags a couple of months ago and really cannot stop myself from sewing them for everyone. I wrote up this pattern to share at our monthly sewing class, and thought I would pass it on to you. This pattern will also work with pretty feed bags. I have made lined goat, special kitty, dog, rabbit, and wild game feed bags that are strong and sure to be unique. In place of fabric liners, I occasionally use old annel bed sheets. The material is strong, and it ows great through the sewing machine. If you have some fancy bird feed bags lying around, grab them and sew some homemade Christmas gifts.
— Pick your fabric for the outside, inside liner and pocket.
By Jacqui Davison Columnist
— Cut to desired size. Some things to consider — pictures, the size of the human the bag is meant for, words if using a feed bag; seams and the bottom only take a few inches. I typically end up with 17-by-17-inches or larger. Squares. Rectangles. It doesn’t matter.
— Cut all four pieces — or two if working with folded pieces — to equal size.
— Cut out the desired size for your pocket. Iron all four sides in about half an inch or more. Stitch top seam down, then pin your pocket to the inside liner fabric.
— Pin and sew on pocket. Take care to only sew the pocket to one side of the liner if using a folded piece of fabric. Three sides only. If the pocket is extra wide or long, I suggest running some stitches down the middle to break it up, otherwise it is too oppy and hard to hold anything in it.
— Pin liner fabric right sides together (RST) and sew side seams. Do the same with outside fabric. RST. Do not sew top and bottom seams.
— Turn the lining fabric inside out, so you can see the pocket.
— Leave the outside fabric RST.
— Slide the liner fabric over the outside fabric — check pocket direction. Trust me.
— Line up the bottom edges, square it (cut it) as needed.
— Pin and sew the bottom edge. Handy tool — little sewing clips are easier to use than pins with this step if you have them. If in a pinch, use little girls’ snap hair clips.
— I sew two seams on the bottom for extra strength, typically about 1/8 of an inch apart or so.
— Put your hand inside and push at the corners to form a triangle. Hint — use your hand as if making a puppet talk, then you make the right shape.
— Push it out, making sure the seam is lying at, and mark 2-3 inches as desired. This makes for a wider bag — easier to haul things, especially books.
— Make sure the seams are going the same way. This refers to the bottom seam when sewing the triangle parts. Make sure they lay at.
— Turn your bag inside out.
— Fold outside fabric to the inside at least a couple of inches and work your way around, pinning as you go. Sewing clips are also fabulous for this step.
— Match the fold-up with the liner fabric, folding it to the inside so it is hidden. Move pins accordingly.
— Cut strapping material, 24 inches or so for each strap.
— Measure 4 inches in from the outside edge. This is what I use. Any further in and they seem too
close together. I put the straps in on the fourth inch.
— Slide strap in between layers and down a couple of inches; pin.
— Make sure strap curls are the same direction.
— Watch your placement of straps as you slide your bag into your machine, they will get caught if you aren’t careful. Treat them as an extension of your fabric.
— Sew all the way around, twice, about 1/4 inch apart or so. Backstitch on the straps multiple times.
— Cut any loose threads. Hold it up and admire it.
— Become obsessed with making bags for everyone.
Jacqui Davison and her family milk 800 cows and farm 1,200 acres in northeastern Vernon County, Wisconsin. Her children, Ira, Dane, Henry and Cora, help on the farm while her husband, Keith, works on a grain farm. If she’s not in the barn, she’s probably in the kitchen, trailing after little ones or sharing her passion of reading with someone. Her life is best described as organized chaos, and if it wasn’t, she’d be bored.
We
Ramblings from the Ridge
How did I get into farming? My parents helped me start milking 39 cows back in 1987 renting a farm that is across the road from our current farm.
What are the most signicant ways your farm has changed since you started farming? We grew our herd from within by raising our own replacement heifers. We also added the Jerseys for higher components.
What was a challenge you faced in your dairy farming career and how did you overcome it? The biggest challenge I faced in my career was when I started farming, the farm that I was renting had stray voltage, and, as we know, that can ruin a herd. Luckily, we were able to nd it was caused by an improperly grounded jar pump motor. After we took care of that, the problem ceased.
What is the best decision you have made on your farm? The best decisions that I have made are AI breeding,
DAIRY PROFILE
the total mixed ration and baleage.
What three things on the farm you cannot live without? Family help, my skid steers and the power feed cart.
What are your thoughts and concerns about the dairy industry for the next year? The rising cost of inputs.
What strategies do you use to withstand the volatile milk prices? We rely on the Dairy Margin Coverage program as well as beef calf sales.
How do you retain a good working relationship with your employees, or how do you maintain family relationships while also working together? We rely on communication with our family members. That is key in making sure that everybody is on the same page.
What do you nd most rewarding about dairy farming? It’s a very rewarding lifestyle, but it is also busy.
It is nice to have productive and healthy cows and the best is having our family return to help.
Tell us something special about your farm. We are a small family farm, using older equipment and making enough feed for our herd and our replacements. Our daughters dreamed of having one of every dairy breed, which we now have. People have stopped at the farm just to tell
us that they drove by and saw our cows in the pasture and wanted us to know how nice it was to see all the different breeds and colors of cows. That is special for us.
What are your plans for your dairy in the next year and in the next ve years? All we really plan to do is keep things the same in the next year and the next ve years, too.
How do you or your family like to spend time when you are not doing chores? We like to go to a movie every once in a while, or out for lunch sometimes. We may take a very short, two-day vacation. Most of all, if we are not doing chores, spending time with our family is what means the most to us.
Colostrum tips, tricks
As we move into winter, I like to review colostrum practices on farms to help producers prepare for cold weather challenges that can exacerbate neonatal calf health challenges. Thanks to Dr. Sandra Godden’s research at the University of Minnesota, we can rely on the “5 basic Q’s” of colostrum: quickness, quality, quantity, squeaky clean and quantify.
Veterinary Wisdom
Quickness
Best practice is to feed colostrum within two hours of birth, though four hours could be used on farms. I would say quickness also applies to colostrum collection of the dam. Research suggests the best immunoglobulin G concentrations are attained when the fresh cow is milked within 30 minutes of calving. However, within the rst two hours of calving can also perform well. The downside to waiting longer for colostrum collection is that, as the cow produces more milk volume, she will dilute IgG concentrations to some degree.
tocin statistically improved the colostrum yield. There was no increase in volume for mature cows given oxytocin. There was no effect on the concentration of IgG in any group when oxytocin was used. There was also no benet to giving 1 mL of oxytocin to either mature cows or fresh heifers. This data suggest the new experience of calving and colostrum collection for heifers may be sufciently stressful to limit milk let-down and colostrum yield.
Quality
By Megan Weisenbeck Veterinary Wisdom
One tip I recently read: consider using 2 milliliters of oxytocin in fresh heifers to improve colostrum yield. Recent research by Cornell University and the University of Bern, Switzerland, evaluated the routine use of oxytocin on colostrum yield on a commercial dairy farm. All animals included in the study were Holsteins and experienced normal calving. Fresh heifers and mature cows were included in the study. Cows in the treatment group were given either 1 or 2 mL of oxytocin about 45 seconds prior to milking unit attachment. Cows in the control group were not given any oxytocin or other injection (placebo) before unit attachment. The volume of colostrum and IgG concentrations were then measured.
Results showed that treating primiparous cows (fresh heifers) with 2 mL of oxy-
Historically, we have recommended using 22% on a Brix refractometer for a cutoff. Research shows that this correlates to approximately 50 gram/liter IgG. If you feed four quarts of 22%, it should be approximately 200 g IgG total. However, recent research has suggested that feeding levels higher than 22% are benecial both short-term and long-term. I now recommend feeding a Brix of 24% or higher to all replacement heifers. However, there is research suggesting that there are no signicant benets to feeding more than 300 g total of IgG. If the number is under 24%, I often use an app to calculate the amount of colostrum replacer needed to raise the number to 24%. Both Alta and the Saskatoon Colostrum Company have free apps that are easy to use on a cellphone or tablet.
Quantity
Feed 1 gallon for rst feeding — consider less for really small calves or Jersey breeds, as 10% of body weight is another recommendation. The Dairy Calf and Heifer Association recommends 3 quarts of colostrum for every 60 pounds of body weight. Some farms I work with also feed a second feeding of colostrum 8-12 hours after the rst feeding. Feeding by bottle or tube feeder both work well as long as the calf consumes the entire volume. Also, make sure
those tube feeders are not so rough that they will dam-age the calf’s esophagus.
Squeaky clean
This measurement depends on whether you pasteurize colostrum or not. I do recommend the use of a colostrum pasteurizer to reduce contamination and human errors in colostrum collection. DCHA recommends a standard plate count of less than 50,000 cfu/ mL for fresh colostrum and less than 20,000 cfu/mL for pasteurized colostrum. They also recommend that coliform levels (think E. coli-type bacteria) be less than 5,000 cfu/mL for fresh colostrum and less than 100 cfu/ mL for pasteurized colostrum. Re-member, bacteria colonies essentially bind the antibodies in the colostrum and can prevent absorption of antibodies. Common areas of contamination include poor udder hygiene of fresh cows, dirty bottles or colostrum tube feeders, and dirty colostrum collection buckets, especially if those buckets sit lled in the parlor for more than 20 minutes.
Quantify
Measure serum total protein in calves 24 hours to 7 days old, ideally 12 or more a month. I would recommend using a different test if you are feeding a lot of colostrum replacer, as the serum total protein test will not be accurate for calves fed colostrum replacer. Typically, I recommend an IgG radial immunodiffusion test, which we can run on the same blood sample type. I have included the newest serum total protein goals from
DCHA below for reference.
I mentioned the short-term and longterm effects of colostrum above. Those benets are really signicant. One study followed animals from 3-450 days of life and collected reproduction data and milk performance as a rst lactation animal. Higher initial serum total protein concentrations (think 6.0 g/dL and higher) were associated with the following factors:
— Reduced age at rst estrus, A.I., time to pregnancy, and calving by 16, 18, 25, and 25 days, respectively. That is up to 25 days less on feed.
— Positively correlated with milk production and increased total milk yield and yield of energy-corrected milk by about 708 lbs (1,558 kg) and 522 lbs (1,149 kg) during rst lactation. Specically, increased preweaning average daily gain was correlated with increased energy-corrected milk at 305 days in milk by 342 lbs (754 kg) in the rst lactation.
If you have more colostrum questions or would like references, please contact me. Happy colostrum harvesting.
Megan Weisenbeck is one of six veterinarians at Northern Valley Livestock Services in Plainview, MN. She practices primarily dairy production medicine in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Megan can be reached at meganweisenbeck.dvm@gmail.com.
Treasure hunting
I listened to a book recently about an eccentric art dealer who thought he was going to die of cancer. So, he put together a chest full of treasures like gold coins and precious stones and hid it in the Rocky Mountains.
The book is called “Chasing the Thrill” by Daniel Barbarisi, which is very similar to the memoir the art dealer Forrest Fenn wrote, which contained the poem and clues to nd his hidden treasure, called “The Thrill of the Chase.” Fenn managed to beat cancer and spent years overseeing the hunt for the treasure he had hidden, giving small hints here and there to help people avoid getting in dangerous situations while searching.
The author began writing the book after looking for the treasure with his friend. They never do
nd the treasure over the years the author works on the book, but it pulls him into an interesting world of people he interviews and goes searching with.
Some of the characters and situations he describes reminded me a lot of farming. At rst, the people searching for the treasure sound so hopeful. They have the clues all gured out and they just need to comb through the region they think the clues indicate a few more times to nd it. Farming is often like that, where, at rst, it seems like you’ve got a new venture or system nearly all gured out. Everything is running smoothly. You are not where you want to be quite yet, but it seems like you are sure to get there soon, and it will be great.
As the book goes on, the mood changes. The
author and his friend come up with what they think are original and brilliant solutions to the clues but continue to nd nothing when they go out searching. The people he interviews are less condent they will nd the treasure, too, and some people question whether Forrest Fenn even hid a treasure at all. They think maybe they have all been searching in vain for something that does not exist or maybe did once but has been found and the nder did not tell a soul they found it.
It’s easy to understand their frustration. If you have been looking for something for years and seem to be no closer to nding it, you’ve felt that frustration. Protability in farming ventures can be that way. Elusive. Lately, many of our farm’s business ventures have felt like a treasure hunt that may have no treasure to be found. Ination seems to have increased the price of all our inputs, but what we’ve been getting paid for our products has fallen short of keeping up.
The hunt ends with the discovery of the treasure a decade after the announcement of its existence by a guy that no one in the community of hard-core treasure hunters had ever heard of. He wasn’t even from a state near the mountains it was hidden in. It turned out that all those who had lost hope and blamed Fenn for running a con were wrong. They just weren’t looking in the right spot. The guy who found it said he did nothing fancy to nd the location of the treasure. He didn’t look for complicated answers like many people did. Instead, he read the memoir of the man who hid the treasure and did his best to understand him and think like him. It worked out well. I believe I saw on the internet that the treasure was auctioned off for $1.3 million.
I think there’s a bit of wisdom to be taken from that book for us in agriculture. Understand your customer and what they truly value if you want to nd where they hide their treasures.
Until next time, keep living the dream — unless your dream was to nd that treasure in the Rocky Mountains, in which case, it has been found, and you’ll have to come up with a new dream.
Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.
Our presence in the Advent season
Nazareth was a small village of Galilee with a small population of less than ve hundred. To many, it was of little to no importance and not much happened. It was small, poor and unassuming. It escaped the noise and activity of the big city.
Mary, born in Nazareth, would have had a disposition that reected the village in which she grew up, as our external environments directly affect our internal environments. As dairy farmers, we can testify to
it can quickly become overwhelming. Sometimes we can feel a lack of control, with res arising that need to quickly be put out. Focusing on the present moment and specic tasks at hand frees us from anxiety and helps us develop a sense of appreciation and gratitude for what is going well for us right now in this moment.
Here are a few easy strategies that will allow you to practice some presence this year and develop a sense of solace and gratitude that the Advent season is suggesting.
By Megan Schrupp & Ellen Stenger Columnists
this. The non-stop demands of milking, feeding, market trends, employees, breakdowns, projects and, not to mention, family commitments, make dairy farming one of the most demanding and stressful occupations. Add in all the extra demands of the cold winter and holidays, and we have set ourselves up for another season that sends us running and leaves us exhausted after it has again own on by.
In reection of the impending Christmas season, we are again challenging ourselves with the act of being present. As the world around us is spinning into a frenzy, Advent is inviting us to slow down. Sounds simple, but it is much more difcult than one would think. Presence is an acquired skill we tend to forget about. One that takes practice — a lot of practice. Being present is the act of being joyful in whatever you are doing, grateful that you are able to do the task, and fully appreciating the moment and the task itself. The hard part is being fully engaged in the current moment, without distraction, and without dwelling on the past and planning or worrying about the future.
On the farm, there are many things coming at us all at once, and
First, we suggest monotasking. Focus on one task at a time. Focus on completing that task to the best of your ability. When we do two things at once, we oftentimes do both tasks half as well.
Leave the phone behind. During the day, Megan intentionally leaves her phone in the ofce or vet room. The constant dinging and ringing are notorious for interrupting focus and distracting from completing the task at hand. It can be difcult, as we increasingly rely on our phones for everything from cow records and health data to communication within our team. But moments of silence can give time for contemplation, gratitude and observation. If you can’t leave the phone behind, turn off the notications on your apps. Do we all need to know exactly when an email has arrived? We certainly don’t need to know the moment a post is liked on Facebook, a message is received or a post is shared on social media. Silence the buzzing, dinging and ringing to return some peace and quiet to our lives.
Set time limits. There’s also a great feature on our phones called time limit. Set a limit of 30 minutes for your social media apps. You will be shocked to nd how quickly that time passes by and how often and quickly you hit the limit. Or, if you are feeling more ambitious, take a break from social media altogether for a set period of a few days, weeks or months.
When you prioritize your presence, you are gifting yourself a more balanced, grateful and fullling life, one that this Advent is inviting us all to enjoy this Christmas season.
Megan Schrupp and Ellen Stenger are sisters and co-owners of both NexGen Dairy and NexGen Market in Eden Valley, Minnesota. They can be reached at Nexgendairy@gmail.com.
The NexGen: Adventures of two dairy daughters
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Eastern Iowa Dairy System
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